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<title>Star Plot</title>
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<h1 class="title">Liquid Diagrams</h1>

<p class="title">
&copy;2012 Dieter Ladenhauf<br/>
</p>


<h2 class="title">Similarity Map</h2>

<p>The similarity map calculates the similarity between multidimensional data items and places items according 
to a force-directed placement algorithm. Currenty two different force directed placement algorithms are implemented:</p><br />

<ul>
<li><b>Brute-Force Algorithm:</b> This is the original algorithm from Eades [1984]. It calculates all forces for all nodes. This results in a complexity of O(n^3).</li>
<li><b>Chalmers'96 Algorithm:</b>This algorithm is an implementation of Chalmer’s force-diected placement algorithm, published in 1996. It 
reduces the complexity of the iteration time to O(n) and results in an overall complexity of O(n^2). Due to 
this fact, this algorithm should be preferred for larger datasets.</li>
</ul>


<br />
	<a href="images/simmap.png"><img class="center" src="images/simmap.png" alt="The Liquid Diagrams Star Plot visualisation." width="650" height="350"/></a>
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<br/>

<h2 class="title">Features</h2>

<b>Changing the colours of entities</b><br/>
<p>Initially the colours used in a visualisation depend on the chosen colour scheme. Colour schemes
are colour palettes that define a limited amount of colours that are used in a visualisation. The 
colour schemes where taken from <a href="http://de-de.colourlovers.com">COLOURLovers</a>. If a colour scheme has
less colours defined than entities are present in a data set the colours are repeated.</p>

<p>All colours used to draw entities can be changed by using a colour picker. To change the colour of a specific entity the user has to
click on the colour rectangle, representing the entities colour, in the legend panel. This will bring
up the colour picker. After selecting the colour the selection is verified with the Ok button and the
colour is immediately assigned to the entity.</p><br/>

<b>Changing fonts</b><br/>
<p>All the fonts used in the visualisations can be replaced by other fonts. To do this the user has to switch
to the "Font" panel in the options and choose a font colour, size and type for the desired font 
category. When using the corresponding buttons it is possible to set the font style to bold, italic and 
underline. The selected fonts are loaded on runtime into the gadget.</p><br/>

<b>Hide single entities</b><br/>
<p>Entities can be hidden by clicking on an entities name in the legend panel while holding down the
ALT key. Clicking once more will show the entity again.</p><br/>

<b>Changing diagram title</b><br/>
<p>The user can dynamically alter the diagram title by clicking on
the appropriate label. A text box will then appear to enter the new title. The edit process is finished
by confirming the changes with the enter key.</p><br/>

<b>Transpose the data</b><br/>
<p>All Liquid Diagrams Gadgets offer a function to transpose data. This is especially useful if the
data is in the wrong format and it would take several minutes to transpose it by using other applications.
For example Google Docs the only external data source currently available does not
have a function to transpose the data. The transpose option is available among the gadget settings
(almost at the bottom of the gadget options frame) when adding the gadget to the spreadsheet.</p><br/>

<b>Interactively changing gadget settings</b><br/>
<p>Using Google Docs it is not possible to change the gadget settings without losing all changes that
have been made in the visualisation. That means if changes like filters, swapped axes, hidden
data,... have been made they will be reset when changing the gadget parameters with the default
Google gadget settings. This is due to the fact that a new gadget request is sent by Google and the
visualisation is created once again.</p>

<p>Using the Options Panel the user is able to change the parameters dynamically while
exploring the data. This is done through a separate gadget settings menu displayed to the left side
of the visualisation.</p><br/>
<br/>

<h2 class="title">Data Format</h2>
<p>The data format of this visualisation can be seen in the <a href="dataformats.html#multidimensional">data formats document</a>.</p>
<br /><br />

<h2 class="title">Parameter List</h2>

<table width="1290" border="1">
  <tr>
    <td width="65" align="center">Number</td>
    <td width="225" align="left">Parameter</td>
    <td width="98" align="center">Type</td>
    <td width="163" align="center">Options</td>
    <td width="705" align="left">Description</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td align="center">1</td>
    <td align="left">X-Size</td>
    <td align="center">Number</td>
    <td align="center"></td>
    <td align="left">The x-size available to the gadget.</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td align="center">2</td>
    <td align="left">Y-Size</td>
    <td align="center">Number</td>
    <td align="center"></td>
    <td align="left">The y-size available to the gadget.</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td align="center">3</td>
    <td align="left">Show Label</td>
    <td align="center">Boolean</td>
    <td align="center">true | false</td>
    <td align="left">Show or hide the name label of each data set.</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td align="center">4</td>
    <td align="left">Legend</td>
    <td align="center">String</td>
    <td align="center">No Legend | Horizontal | Vertical</td>
    <td align="left">Determines the legend position.</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td align="center">5</td>
    <td align="left">Title</td>
    <td align="center">String</td>
    <td align="center"></td>
    <td align="left">Diagram Title - displayed above the visualisation.</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td align="center">6</td>
    <td align="left">Data Point Format</td>
    <td align="center">String</td>
    <td align="center">Square | Square Hollow | Circle | Circle Hollow | Diamond | Diamond Hollow | Cross | Plus </td>
    <td align="left">The format of the data points.</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td align="center">7</td>
    <td align="left">Data Points Size</td>
    <td align="center">Number</td>
    <td align="center">1-100</td>
    <td align="left">The desired data points size.</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td align="center">8</td>
    <td align="left">Number Input Format</td>
    <td align="center">String</td>
    <td align="center">No Formatting | 1,000.00 | 1.000,00</td>
    <td align="left">Determines the format in which the supplied data is formatted.</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td align="center">9</td>
    <td align="left">Number Display Format</td>
    <td align="center">String</td>
    <td align="center">No Formatting | 1,000.00 | 1.000,00</td>
    <td align="left">Defines how numbers are to be displayed within the diagram.</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td align="center">10</td>
    <td align="left">Show Title</td>
    <td align="center">Boolean</td>
    <td align="center">true | false</td>
    <td align="left">Show or hide the diagram title.</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td align="center">11</td>
    <td align="left">Use Ratio</td>
    <td align="center">Boolean</td>
    <td align="center">true | false</td>
    <td align="left">Determines whether to use a custom display ratio or not. If yes, x-ratio and y-ratio need to be supplied also.</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td align="center">12</td>
    <td align="left">X-Ratio</td>
    <td align="center">Number</td>
    <td align="center"></td>
    <td align="left">Width ratio factor.</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td align="center">13</td>
    <td align="left">Y-Ratio</td>
    <td align="center">Number</td>
    <td align="center"></td>
    <td align="left">Height ratio factor.</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td align="center">14</td>
    <td align="left">Label Style</td>
    <td align="center">String</td>
    <td align="center"></td>
    <td align="left">Above | Beneath.</td>
  </tr>
</table>

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